Twice Ever After
by saaifione
Summary: Deep into the end of summer, they lost everything when they lost the war. But this is a second life and a second chance, even if it doesn't seem to be the right one. Sokka swears he'll find Zuko. Sokka/Zuko.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** twice ever after  
**Rating:** T  
**Summary:** Deep into the end of summer, they lost everything when they lost the war. But this is a second life and a second chance, even if it doesn't seem to be the right one. Sokka swears he'll find Zuko. Sokka/Zuko.

**Disclaimer**: A:TLA is not mine.

**Notes:** Technically follows the one-shot _breathing patterns_, but it's not like plot happens in that story so it's probably not necessary to read it. The relevant things that are established in _breathing patterns_: slight-AU pre-apocalyptical atmosphere and Sokka and Zuko's pseudo-relationship.

Dating system based on the Avatar Wiki's timeline (Aang is found end-of-year Winter 99 ASC and Sozin's Comet comes Summer 100 ASC), but the actual numerical value of the years matter less than the relationship between years.

This is really just a romp into my weakness for time travel/reliving fics, though I'd be happy if other people were able to enjoy it as well. At the core it's Sokka/Zuko (some strange combination of pre-established and eventual), though canon pairings will be mentioned or skirted around. Just a warning: things might not be as they initially appear.

So, let's start by killing people off.

* * *

**__****_100 ASC (Sokka)_**

**_Summer  
_**

In the end it wasn't enough.

He hadn't thought it would be.

* * *

By the time Phoenix King Ozai is defeated the Fire Nation capital has been razed to the ground.

So has the rest of the world.

Katara is the one to strike the fatal blow, and she has never looked colder than that moment she spears the Phoenix King through the heart, has never looked more like a girl made of polar ice. Katara has never forgiven the Fire Nation for what they've done to their home, and when the ice in her eyes does not thaw even a bit upon killing the Phoenix King, Sokka knows she never will.

Never would have, but she dies, trying to bring Aang back to life.

Aang died, trying to bring back the world.

Earth to the ground Ozai had burnt into ashes, Water to the oceans Ozai had dissolved into steam, Air to the lungs Ozai had seared of breath. Fire, fire, life to everyone who had died.

It still wasn't enough to save them.

* * *

This world, Ozai had yelled, and his voice had grate like ashes. This world is not fitting to be my world.

This world is not good enough.

Any world without her is not good enough.

* * *

Azula laughs when Ozai dies, and it cries of broken things.

_See, see Mother? What sort of family is this, who would kill the other? You chose the wrong child to love. _

She laughs and laughs and glares at Zuko, she sneers, _You never loved Father at all._

Sokka wonders how she can fight like that, how she can see through all her tears. Before today, he never would have thought her capable of crying.

Zuko fights her with dry eyes, but for the gashes on his cheekbones which bleed like bloody tears.

She shatters Zuko's arm in five places, breaks his leg in three, and her laugh crackles like lightning when she aims it at his chest. Only she misses, or she never wanted to hit, and a part of Sokka wonders how much she cares about family after all before it strikes Sokka right above his heart.

It doesn't matter, really. Sokka was dying before it hit, so it really changes nothing at all.

Zuko kills her as a mercy, to become the Lord of ashes.

* * *

Toph, at least, is still alive, though entirely worse than blind. A good thing, Sokka thinks, as far as good things go. There has been too much burning already, and they'll need someone to bury the corpses.

* * *

_Please_- Sokka hears, _Please, Please_.

Zuko isn't crying, but it might sound better if he did. He has never heard Zuko beg.

It is a horrible thing to listen to, and Sokka doesn't want it to be the last thing he hears, so he listens to his heartbeat instead. It's a listing thing- he can almost pretend it's the waves, and they're still diving by the sea.

(_ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump ba-_ …)

* * *

…

…

…

…

* * *

(_-thump_)

* * *

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

_._**_  
_**

**_95 ASC (Sokka)_**

**_Spring - Winter  
_**_._

* * *

The first night Sokka remembers, he dreams of Zuko.

It is spooky and spirit-y and completely not perverted at all. He swears. And even if it were, he hasn't even reached puberty to properly try and appreciate it.

Zuko's almost shirtless, but that's only because Azula missed when she shot fire at his arm and he had to rip off his sleeve to keep from burning. It's still smoldering, even after she's dead. In the dream Aang's dead, and so is Katara, and Sokka himself. At least, Sokka is getting there.

Besides, there's bone sticking out from Zuko's arm and he's bloody where he isn't bruised, so he really doesn't make much of an appealing picture at all.

Toph is gazing at Zuko with a blankness that isn't entirely from being blind, her limbs burnt to husks and Sokka wonders if she can still see.

Maybe, because when Zuko leans on the earth Toph rasps, _What are you doing, Sparky?_ and even dreaming Sokka loves her for not calling Zuko anything else, for being steady even when the world falls apart.

_What are you doing?_

Hands posed in a flame kept painfully steady, Zuko kneels low on a broken arm and broken leg, touching his head to the ground.

…_declare myself_, Zuko says, voice fading like static, _before Agni… before… Yue… the Fire Throne… blood oaths and blood debts… asking for… another chance._

_Please, _Zuko whispers, stuttering, and he has never been one for eloquence, _please, please, please_.

Sokka wakes up to his heartbeat, wondering why there are tear-tracks on his face.

* * *

At first he thinks it'll be enough to wait.

Don't mess with fate too much in case you accidentally mess it up, let tigerdillos lay lest they rouse to eat you for a snack. Something like that, anyway.

But he's too impatient for that to last, and pragmatism wins out in the end. Really, how is he doing anyone any favors by letting Aang freeze his butt off in an iceberg for the next few years? There's also Appa to think about.

And Aang deserves a few years of peace before fighting in any wars.

If Sokka was really truthful with himself it's also because he wants proof. Any proof, really, that he isn't just insane.

* * *

Aang is, somehow, even more hyperactive than Sokka remembers him being.

The first thing he does after Aang thaws is pin him to the iceberg with a knife made of whale-bone.

The second thing he does is say, "Don't fly away. I know you're the Avatar."

The third thing he does is tell Aang that the airbenders are dead.

Which, okay, he'll admit, isn't the most considerate way to put it, but he's had worse news broken to him in worse ways during the war, and he is so damn relieved to be able to _do_ something again.

(Icebergs flow, and it'd taken a while to find the right one, especially since he had to sneak out all the time to search for it. He's eleven and apparently Gran-Gran doesn't think that's old enough to save the world.)

Aang looks all of panicked and disbelieving all at once, rambling, "What – I don't know what you're talking about – you're joking – you're lying – what? – what? – they can't be dead, I was with them just a day ago."

Katara looks all pinched and concerned, first at Sokka, because he's her big brother who's been acting kind of strange, then at Aang because he's the older kid they've found who really _is_ strange. He's an airbender. He's the last of his kind.

"It's true," she says, fierce and raw as a hurting wound, "the Fire Nation wiped them out a hundred years ago."

Their mother is dead. It aches deeply that Sokka did not remember soon enough to change it, if there was a soon enough in the first place. Maybe some things are meant to be while others are made to be, and the look in Aang's eyes would have been there regardless.

Aang's eyes go large and welling like he still doesn't believe them, but doesn't know how to doubt them entirely. Even when she's skirting ten Katara doesn't know how to not feel compassion, so she gathers Aang up awkwardly in her arms and pats him on the back, like he's a polar-dog.

* * *

"It's a whippy thing. You whip it," Sokka says, making a swishing gesture through the air. "I don't know how _else_ to describe it."

Katara scowls at him which just makes him scowl back, except he kind of remembers a time when her scowl meant something was about to be drowned.

Memories of the past life are an iffy thing for him. They come and they go and sometimes they stay for a visit, but everything's more déjà-vu than not, except for when he dreams.

When he dreams, it's always about Zuko.

But by the time he's awake the dreams are nothing but cloud wisps floating away, their vibrancy lost to reality.

"_Argh_, look, I don't know how you did any of your freaky magic stuff except that it was done with freaky magic powers which I _don't have_. Being a non-freaky non-bender," he huffs, with both more and less heat than he would have at this age, in another lifetime.

Katara, for her part, has mostly come to believe him about knowing things he shouldn't, though that's probably because he's managed to unearth (un-ice?) a living fossil, who is now sleeping in their hut. She was even excited about the possibility of learning more advanced waterbending. It doesn't mean she's always supportive of it.

"Right. Sure. I just don't see the point of remembering a past life if you can't even remember the _important_ parts of it."

Repeat life rather than past life, and Sokka scowls fiercer because Katara doesn't _understand_. "I do remember the important parts!"

Like Katara's determination in getting Pakku to teach her how to fight. Like Aang's eyes glowing in the Avatar state. Like Toph seeing without eyes. Like Suki. Like Yue. Like taking Zuko diving.

"I do remember the important parts. The details are just harder."

Katara frowns, but it's a softer thing, because she knows he wakes up with his breaths come too fast, with lightning still singing in his chest.

He wonders how Zuko died, in that lifetime.

"Fine. Show me again," Katara says, and he goes through the motion more deliberately this time, remembering how she looked when fighting.

Cold, beautiful, fierce. Like she could murder anyone who threatened those she cherished in the world.

Defense, he thinks, he is teaching her defense. But he knows he is teaching her to kill.

His own training goes only slightly better, because he doesn't quite have the muscles to swing a sword and there are no meteorites to forge one anyway. His mind remembers what his body does not, so he trains until the motions are habit. He ends up practicing with his boomerang before he adds a machete, with the determination he always had but an urgency that's new.

He remembers another life, and it matches up to his own, except for little bits and pieces which probably don't mean a thing. The snow piles up a little thicker this year. The ice thaws a little slower.

There isn't enough vegetation in the South Pole to feed Aang, let alone Appa, so they make trips to the tip of the Earth Kingdom under the cover of night. They never fly any further, because they have to be back before morning, before Dad realizes they're missing or Gran-Gran tries to rouse them from their beds.

They go to the Southern Air Temple once and Aang walks in them for hours, long enough that they end up taking Appa back themselves to prevent an influx of questions. When they come Aang has cried himself to sleep amongst the skeletons, and tiny ball of fur is curled up on his shoulder.

Aang has never asked to go to the other air temples and Sokka doesn't want to suggest it. He's almost afraid to leave. He doesn't know who else remembers, doesn't know what other little things might change. Sokka doesn't want to miss it, to miss him.

Sokka trains, and he tells Katara about waterbending, and Katara shows it to Aang like a game, and he waits, and he waits.

He is waiting for Zuko to come.

* * *

.

**_95 ASC (Zuko)_**

**_Spring - Summer_**

.

* * *

After the fact, the first person he goes to see is his uncle.

He traveled the world at thirteen and he tells himself eleven isn't much different, he isn't really eleven, anyway. Boats are an inconvenient method of travel and he finds himself wishing instead for airships and sky bison, or perhaps a path through the Spirit World. But one hasn't been invented and one is thought to be extinct and one he isn't allowed to use in any case. So he sails.

It is entirely too similar to his first trip at sea, and entirely too foreign all at once. The crew doesn't give him a passing glance, doesn't even seem to see him, and he reminds himself that even if they did there'd be no banished prince of the Fire Nation to see. The thing he is now…it's not banished, really. He can go home anytime he wants. He is just going to get Uncle to come back with him.

He's styled his hair differently from its usual ponytail. Has cut it short and shaggy with a slash of a hand, and fashioned a portion of it into some approximation of sideburns. He looks nothing like his cousin did when he was eleven years old, but with some balance of luck and his lack of it, his uncle will be too grief-stricken to care.

He wonders, briefly, if his hair will ever grow back.

The men in front of the war camp don't notice him as he passes them. There is no flicker of recognition in their eyes, not even a twitch of acknowledgement. He is getting used to it, barely. He thinks, he will have a long time to get used to it.

The camp has broken down since the ending of the siege. Over half of the men have already sailed home. The ship he was on is coming to get the stragglers.

He feels sick with the knowledge that he's practically left his cousin for dead, but what could the words and actions of an eleven year old boy do in a time of war, especially a boy not yet the Fire Nation heir?

He'd done what he could already, and the memory of it makes him feel even sicker.

"Uncle?" he calls, as he enters the biggest tent, wondering if his uncle has already begun trying to reach the Spirit World. He remembers himself and starts calling "Father" instead.

He can play the part of another boy's ghost. He'll be more loved for it than he'd been by his father.

His uncle doesn't respond at first, just stares blankly into the distance, his posture a study in grieving. He almost thinks his uncle won't respond at all.

A mistake, he thinks, sickly. He's made another mistake. Maybe even after everything he's managed to solve nothing.

(It would be better if that boy were here.)

But Uncle blinks and turns to him, tears filling his eyes. The torches cast shadows in his wrinkles. Uncle has grown old where he has grown young, and he hopes that at least one of them won't be permanent.

"Lu Ten," Uncle says, "oh, Lu Ten," and he answers, "Father, please come home."

* * *

His father is crowned Fire Lord by the time they return, and his uncle doesn't raise a word of protest.

It's okay, really, because he doesn't think he could ask that of Uncle, and he doesn't think the Fire Nation has the right. (He loves his country, truly, but sometimes the memory of it hurts.)

There's more than one way to fix a wrong and his mother is by Ozai's side.

(Ozai, he repeats, Ozai. He shouldn't call him Father anymore.

But he still wants to call her his mother.)

His mother is compassionate where Ozai is not, will temper him so maybe this time it'll be different. And Uncle is here, Uncle is here, Uncle calls him Lu Ten but Uncle will be alright. He has to be.

Everything will be alright.

He doesn't know, anymore, if what he's wishing for is for another's sake, or the nation's sake, or the sake of the entire world. Maybe all of them, because he doesn't want to be selfish anymore. His selfishness is what caused the world to end in the first place.

* * *

The servants don't see him and he has to be careful when traveling down the halls, because otherwise they might run into him.

He doesn't go to see his mother because he doesn't know what he'd say. Ozai, he's sure, wouldn't want to know he's still around.

But Azula is an accident. He doesn't mean for her to see him.

"What are you doing here, Zuzu?" she scowls, when she catches him watching her practice. She should be more surprised than this, he thinks. She shouldn't call him Zuzu anymore.

But back in the past where she was fourteen and the world was burning she called _Mother _like Mother had been there. Maybe she just needs things like this. Maybe she's insane.

She's to be the Fire Nation's next Fire Lord.

"Am I not allowed to be here?" he snaps back, and it's an entirely foreign thing, to be speaking to a living person again. (Uncle doesn't count because Uncle always speaks at him, and he's always afraid to say the wrong thing so he doesn't say anything at all.)

"I can _make_ you leave," Azula snarls, forming a fireball that flickers red and blue. But he's seen blue fire before and he's seen lightning before and he's had them both flung at him, so he isn't afraid.

She's nine years old, and he thinks he has no reason to be afraid of her.

"It's not like you could hurt me," he scoffs, and she actually flinches into extinguishing her flame.

"It's not like I could kill you," she says, and for once the truth seems to hurt her more than him.

* * *

He thinks of that boy and how he'd want to see him, if he could, and why it's best if he didn't.

If the war can end in the Fire Nation, he thinks, then let it.

* * *

**A/N**: So yes, it shall take some time before the two storylines converge (though I suppose that was self-evident from the summary). I was bit iffy about how to split up the chapters, and the title, so we'll see how this goes.

Also, I get nitpicky about ages- not that it's terribly important. I'm unaware of any of the cast having official birthdays, so I've just assigned them seasonal birthdays based on their bending (or non-bending as it were in Sokka's case). Just in case anyone's curious:

Ages

95 ASC [Toph: 6/7, Azula: 9/10, Katara: 9/10, Sokka: 10/11, Zuko: 11/12, Aang: 12]

Birthdays

Spring - Toph (early)

Summer - Zuko (early), Azula (middle), Sokka (late)

Autumn - Aang (late)

Winter - Katara (end of year)


	2. Chapter 2

- x - x - x -

_**96 ASC (Sokka)**_

_**Winter**_

- x - x - x -

* * *

Sokka draws pictures. They're supposed to be blueprints, but his artistic skills haven't miraculously improved with effort and snow proves a difficult surface to draw on.

He doesn't try calligraphy, because that'd be an insult to the art, and he doesn't know if he remembers how. The angle of the brush and the pressure of the bristles– details, and he's not very good at remembering those. He doesn't have the materials to try.

Paper is something of a luxury in the South Pole, if not an outright legend, and tiger-seal skins aren't much better, especially when it comes to doodles. At least that's what Dad sees when he looks at Sokka's hazy recollections of submarines and airships, sketched out with bones on the snow bank. Sometimes that's all Sokka sees too.

And what sort of proof could Sokka give that these things are a reality, could be a reality, in a village contained in the routine of the seasons but for the whispers that the men might depart for war? What sort of proof could he give but the Avatar, which wouldn't be much proof at all?

They'll see a boy or they'll see a chance, and even if the men take the Avatar to war they'll leave the siblings behind. Sokka asks Katara to keep Aang's identity a secret and she does because she doesn't want that either. Uselessness is a vice that grates at Katara even now, even young, ever since their mother, but she thinks of hurt more than she thinks of revenge, thinks she never wants to lose anyone again.

Sokka doesn't want to lose anyone either.

As far as the village knows Aang's a quirky kid that got shipwrecked on their shore, who's light on his toes and ridiculously impervious to the cold. Enough so that he can go penguin-sledding with Katara for hours at a time in nothing but his robes, coming back cheerful and snow-dusted and not even the slightest tinged with blue.

Must have something to do with sleeping in an ice cube for ninety-five years, but that's just another secret they don't tell.

Aang doesn't try to get them to tell. (They're echoes of memories engraved into truth: _Aang never wanted to be the Avatar_, and _we're his family now_.)

* * *

Aang smiles deviously when he catches Sokka muttering in a field, patting out small snow mounds into regiments. They're far out of sight of the village, close to where Appa sleeps and hides, and no one's supposed to be disturbing him.

_Was this how the battle went? Maybe we could have won if we'd pretended to abandon the wall… but then they might have noticed and used the opportunity to trap us at the pass – we'd have earthbenders but if they had the Dai Li, why is Aang shouting?_

That's all the warning Sokka gets before he looks up and has a snowball smash into his face. He falls down sputtering, sprawling over what was once the Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se, and scowls as he wipes the snow out of his face.

Aang laugh and Appa rises out of the snow bank he's been burrowed in, shaking off a particularly large pile of snow onto Sokka's unprotected front. Momo chitters on Aang's shoulder to make sure they won't forget him.

"If you're going to play out battles you might as well do them interactively," Aang smiles, and Katara quirks a brow.

"If you mope any longer even the snow will start feeling blue," she snarks, and Aang laughs like she's said something particularly brilliant.

Neither understands what they lost in the war. Neither understands what the war even is. Even the summer before the comet, they both thought that winning the war just meant defeating one man.

And it wasn't, Sokka thinks. Winning the war wasn't an event but an amount, a measurement of how much they'd managed not to lose.

But Sokka rises and begins throwing snowballs at them in earnest, even though they're cheaters and bend the snow to their bidding, because Katara laughs and Aang grins with honesty in their gazes and Sokka doesn't know how to tell them.

* * *

- x - x - x -

_**97 ASC (Zuko)**_

_**Spring – Summer**_

- x - x - x -

* * *

The war will not end. At least, he realizes the war will not end just yet. It is too soon, too sudden, for a nation drenched in it to stop. For an entire world that has lived with the knowledge of it to suddenly change. People have lived their entire lifetime knowing nothing but war, or the peripheral of it. The economy, the technology, the lives of thousands of soldiers are tied in the very beats of it.

It was naïve to think they'd be able to end the war in a season. It was naïve to think the war would end with the death of one man.

The war…the war was never _right_ but he thinks it might not be as wrong as the Avatar thought it to be. As others thought it to be.

Thinks, if he were Sozin, he would have been hurt too. That a dear friend never once visited on all of twelve years. That once he did, he refused to even listen. He would have been hurt too, and that is why he wouldn't make a good Fire Lord.

He thinks, the war does not have to end immediately. It just has to start by changing.

* * *

Azula is beautiful and brilliant and deadly, even at eleven years of age, and she makes the perfect Fire heir except that she is cruel.

They have never understood each other, not in the ways that matter, so he finds himself watching her as she practices. Not as a means to gain information on an enemy, or as a way to ingratiate himself to her (he's horrible at lying and worse at manipulation, and even more than that he doesn't want to try), but just to try and understand her.

Her fire burns blue now, a bright blazing fury, and she throws it with such precision that the turtleducks always burn. Singed at the shell, at least, but the last time she did that he didn't visit her for a week, and now she always aims exactly one handwidth to the left.

She is angry, he finds. She smirks and plots and lights things on fire with all the nonchalance of a viper-king, but she is angry. At Mother, at Uncle, but most of all at him.

"She only pretends to care about me now that she doesn't have you," Azula says, flippantly, trying to do a cartwheel like Ty Lee did before she left. "And Uncle never even called me _niece_ until now."

"And what about me?" he frowns.

Azula gives him a look like _what about you?_ She'd made him twine a ribbon of white silk through his hair to remind her.

"You don't have anyone anymore," she declares. And she, standing in the courtyard that is absent of Mai and Ty Lee, doesn't have anyone either.

She is twisted. She is troubled. She just wants to be loved.

If he was redeemable in so many people's eyes, he wonders what that makes her.

* * *

He asks Uncle and it's the first time they've spoken in days. All the other times it's been about the war.

Uncle doesn't call him Lu Ten anymore.

* * *

His mother makes a beautiful Fire Lady, ever tragic in her grief. She loved him, she loves him, and that knowledge comforts as much as it hurts. He never meant to hurt her.

She is beautiful and she is strong and when Ozai stands at the head of every war meeting she stands by his side. He lets her. He listens to her. Because she can be cruel and kind in turn, but most of all she is effective. (And if the granddaughter of the Avatar throws her support in with the war, the court whispers, it must have been the right choice.)

It is the first time he sees her since he went to get Uncle, or at least the first time she would have to see him. But he doesn't let her, hiding behind a mask and silk twined through her hair. He is no one today, except a spirit or a curse or perhaps his uncle's aid. General Iroh's aid, because in this lifetime, the man has never retired.

There is another general speaking, and he remembers this general, has had this entire day seared into his memory and his phantom of a face.

"The Earth Kingdom defenses are concentrated here," the man says, pointing to the map, near the Fire Nation colonies.

"Their dangerous battalions, their strongest forces, and fiercest warriors."

They'll strike to help the colony rebellions, to get the colonies on their side. An offense that's a defense, it's almost like firebending.

"So I am recommending the 41st division."

A division of new recruits, a diversion, a sacrifice. They've been over this before.

His mother stares at the man with deep, dark eyes, and says, "No."

* * *

He doesn't shout or scream, because it wouldn't make a difference. He whispers in Uncle's ear.

General Iroh proposes an alternative: _I believe I've done enough resting. I'd like the chance to go out and stretch out my bones._

Everyone stares. He is the Dragon of the West, of course. A master tactician, and he's won them many victories by coordinating their offensive, even more by finding ways in which they do not have to fight at all. Identifying resistance leader, getting rid of suppliers of arms, trapping the earthbenders in metal. But since the failure of Ba Sing Se no one has seen him on the battlefield.

The Fire Lord laughs and says, "It'll be fearsome to see you out there once again," with a smirk that's less frightening than he remembers. He remembers a lot of things that are different than what they are, his existence being the very least of them.

"Why don't you let me take my niece as well?" Uncle asks, pleasant words and pleasant actions poised for a purpose. "It'll be good practice for her to learn about the battlefield."

It's customary, of course, for royals to go out into the world. To lead in the battlefield, to claim a city for the throne, to chase across the world for the Avatar. But Azula is only eleven. But Azula is a prodigy.

The Fire Lady is the one to answer then, asks, "You will keep her safe?" with her voice warm and deadly.

"She hardly needs the supervising," his uncle chuckles, round and deep, with a confidence people hardly showed in him, "but yes, I will keep her safe."

* * *

They wait until after the second anniversary of Ozai's coronation to leave. They can afford to: three people move more quickly than a division of men, though they may have all the firepower and more.

Ozai stands before the nation and expounds upon the greatness of the Fire Nation, the superiority of their technology and their arts, before his Fire Lady moves forward to speak. She is beloved, by the nation. The years have only made her more so.

He stares at her a long time, before he manages to look away.

(Of course, he thinks, Ozai would have hated him, for gaining his son in place of her.)

* * *

"It was Fire Lord Sozin who wished to share our prosperity with the outer lands," the Fire Lady says. "It was a worthy wish that my grandfather did not understand.

But the wish to share our prosperity is not the same as the wish for war. We have seen, these past years, what good can come of trade and negotiation. What can be achieved without the stimulus of war. Our men are safer without constant battles over foreign lands. Our resources more plentiful without the farmlands burned.

We are the splendor of the world, and without the fear and hatred the war casts upon us, the other nations will recognize it as well."

The crowd cheers, so used to propaganda that even the slight change in cadence doesn't faze it, and his mother smiles at it lovingly.

* * *

- x - x - x -

_**96 – 97 ASC (Sokka)**_

_**Summer – Autumn**_

- x - x - x -

* * *

He's eleven when he realizes he has absolutely no clue what to say to Zuko when he sees him.

"Hi, how've you been?" might be a good start, but depending on the status of Zuko's memory that can end in a lot of ways.

If Zuko doesn't remember, well, he'll probably just look at Sokka like he's crazy (which Sokka has resolutely confirmed for himself, he's _not_) and yell at him before trying to capture the Avatar. Or skip the yelling part and just make a grab for Aang.

And then there'll be a whole other slew of problems in getting Zuko to join their side when he hasn't had the few extra seasons of trauma to nudge him over there.

"Hey, hypothetically speaking, if we tried to convert you to our side back when you first discovered the Avatar, how many bottles of fire-liquor and hours of sharing childhood trauma would it have taken?" …hadn't exactly come up in normal conversation, the few times normal conversation had happened. Besides, it's not like they have fire-liquor stashed around in the first place.

If Zuko _does_ remember, well that's good. That's great. But it makes Sokka wonder why it would have taken him so long to come in the first place.

* * *

He's twelve when he realizes he might have been wrong. That this world might have been wrong, from the beginning.

The men are leaving for war, but he'll see them in two years. Less, if he really wanted to.

They don't get much news in the Southern Water Tribe, yet before the men leave they gather as much intel as they can. Sokka catches some of it, accidentally-on-purpose, things he didn't listen to last time because he'd been too busy sulking. (The men were leaving and_ he_ was being left behind. But this time he has something to look forward to.)

He hears that the Fire Nation's navy has begun establishing a new string of neutral ports along the Earth Kingdom's coasts, and that the western Fire Colonies are poised to rebel. It's bound to fail, he thinks, not in the least because he doesn't remember such a thing succeeding in the past life. But also because of the men's mutters, that the Fire Nation heir will be visiting to settle the dispute.

Zuko shouldn't be an active heir by this point. Zuko should be banished.

But when the men talk of the Fire heir they talk of a princess.

And Zuko was still heir when he was banished, wasn't he? That wasn't stolen from him until later. It couldn't be right, to have a Fire Princess heir. Or maybe Sokka's just wrong. Maybe there's no boy named Zuko in the Fire Nation after all. Maybe he only exists in Sokka's dreams.

Dad makes Sokka promise he'll stay behind to protect the tribe, and Sokka agrees, knowing he'll be breaking it soon.

* * *

He's thirteen, only just, with summer bleeding into autumn when they spot the Earth Kingdom ship in the distance, emblazoned with a flag of a flying boar.

They're a rare enough sight, since earthbenders _hate_ being stranded on water, with Toph especially having had a special vintage of distaste. But it's downright unnatural to see it heading towards the Southern Water Tribe. And it's made of metal, the way Fire Nation ships are made of metal.

_That shouldn't be here_, Sokka thinks, running towards the shore, and _**you**__ shouldn't be here_ when a girl jumps off the boat. She doesn't care though, in the way she's never cared about conventions or expectations or damned common sense.

She slips a bit as she stalks toward him and she's even less than half his height, but she manages to look more intimidating than she really has the right. Sokka doesn't even know how she knows where to walk with her feet muffled by ice, and the grab she makes for his shirt is ironically blind.

"_Where's Sparky?_" Toph yells, glorious in her nine years of age, and though he's too shocked to answer, he's self-aware enough to note that her right hook is as painful as he remembers before it knocks him out.

It's not exactly the most ingratiating thing Toph could have done before he introduces her to his family, but Katara had been angry with him that morning anyway so she's pretty quick to forgive. They'd had an argument about fish poles, he thinks, though he can't remember exactly, and maybe Toph hit him harder than he'd thought. The talking sea prunes certainly agree.

Gran-gran is a bit more thorough in her assessment, drilling Toph about her background before warmly welcoming into their home.

Toph, on her part, must have picked up some things over the years (the reversal of them, at least) and spins some great sob story of how it's her first time at sea. She had snuck on board in order to visit her friend, for they'd been banned from seeing each other due to a family feud. Her ship had been blown off course, and she's so, so sorry, the older boy had just seemed so _scary_ running down the beach with his arms flailing. The punching had been a reflex.

She says it all with a wobbling face and blank eyes turning damp and never once mentions her blindness. Sokka scowls when Toph says _reflex_, because it's like saying you accidentally upturned a continent.

He'd probably fall for it too, if he didn't know her. But he knows her. He _knows_ her. She's not just a dream. (And he's not just a dream to her either.)

It's just then that Aang decides to fly through the door, performing a series of complicated flips before touch-landing on the floor.

"Twinkletoes?" Toph says, surprised. "Why are you _old?_"

Which might be her approximation of_ tall_ or whatever other body structure Toph manages to glean out of the ground, but it's not very hard to be taller than the pipsqueak Aang was at twelve.

(But it's not that, he knows. In their past life Aang died before he could age a day over thirteen.)

"Um, hi?" Aang blinks bewilderedly. "I think you might have me confused for someone else." And he offers her a bright smile she definitely can't see.

Toph's lips twist into a frown and she says, flatly, "Yeah. Probably."

Aang watches her with confusion as she turns to leave.

* * *

Sokka finds Toph grumbling just outside the entrance of the hut, kicking at the ice.

He tucks her under his arm and ignores her protests as he steps purposefully out of the village. There's a place Toph won't be able to find herself in this land full of snow. It's only when they get to a distinctive snow mound that he sets the girl down.

Appa gives a lulling groan as he emerges from the snow, mercifully not flinging the entire load onto them as he does so. Toph stands still as the sky bison snuffles at her hair consideringly, before giving a low noise of contentment and licking her with his tongue.

"Ugh…" Toph mutters, but she says it with a smile.

"So," Sokka asks, settling them back against Appa's side. He smiles back at her and ever if she can't see it, she can hear it in his voice. "Why are you here?"

* * *

She tells him that she's looking for Zuko. She tells him she been looking for a year. Almost, though at the rate she's going it'll definitely be at least three more before she finds him. It surprises Sokka because he remembers what her family was like _Before_, when she was even older than she is now, let alone when she started, but Toph is stubbornly close-lipped about that particular subject.

"Last time," Toph says instead, and Sokka thinks, _last life_, "my mom and dad would invite lots of their business partners over for dinner parties."

She huffs and crosses her arms as she burrows deeper into Appa's fur, as much a sign of frustration as a way to escape the biting chill.

"They always dressed up in the flashiest robes and put on the thickest make-up," which Sokka reads as things Toph couldn't appreciate in the least, "and talked about the latest Earth Kingdom gossip."

Toph scowls. "I hated it," which… well, okay, is just Toph hating the parties. And the people, and probably the gossip for good measure.

Sokka revels in that a moment, that he can talk to her, that he can understand her. He can talk to her without feeling like she's a ghost, or even worse like _he's_ one, just afterimages of a failed world and a failed chance.

"They talked about him," Toph says, "They laughed about him."

She catches Appa's fur in her small hands and lets it thread through her fingers. "Things like, _what kind of heir can be burned by his own fire, no wonder they threw him out, oh it would have been even better for us if he'd stayed_. It got worse when people realized he was looking for the Avatar."

A myth. A legend. Something he'd never find. Until he did, and wasn't Zuko stupidly stubborn like that? Sokka misses the idiot.

"So?" Sokka prompts.

He thinks, Earth is patience but it's also opportunity so she has to have a point. Not that Aang seems to get it, _Earth is enduring until the right moment to strike, so you have to finish eating Gran-gran's sea prunes before we can ask for dessert, Fire is breath but I better not find you and Katara breathing in sync until you're older – in a century, maybe, though this time without the iceberg._

Acknowledged as the Avatar or not it'd be stupid to leave Aang without training, even if he mostly thinks of it as a game. (Yet Sokka thinks of that summer and how this is another thing he doesn't want to lose.)

But now that Toph's here she can take over earthbending lessons. And they'll go find Zuko together. He's the plan guy and that's the play. Or it should be.

"But," Toph says, "people don't laugh about the banished prince anymore."

(The way Toph says it. It reminds Sokka how Dad talked about Mom, when they returned her burnt body to the sea.)

"Does that mean that Zuko remembers too?"

It was a possibility, of course, it always was. That Zuko remembered. That he chose not be banished in the first place. Even more so when Toph said she remembered everything. But it was also always a question. (When will you come?)

"He should," Toph says, and there's a scowl in her voice. "He's the one who caused it to happen."

"What do you mean?"

"He made a deal. Everyone was dead and the world wasn't much better so Zuko made a deal with Agni. And Tui," she says, and Sokka thinks, and Yue, but Yue is not the moon spirit in this lifetime. Yue is _alive_. He hasn't known how to feel about that knowledge, especially now that he's pretty sure Yue is real.

(Because)

Zuko told Sokka he loved him (in his words, with his gaze, with every breath he breathed). It was weird and strange and unexpected and it was one of the first things Sokka remembered. Even through all the memories that have filtered back Sokka has never once remembered saying it back.

He doesn't think he ever did.

"He's changed something, I think," Toph grouses, "More than you have, and more than I have. I don't think we were even supposed to be a part of it," like being left out is the worst part. (And it is, actually. In all this time Sokka had never actually thought that Zuko wouldn't come at all.)

"Is that why you're trying to find him?" Sokka asks, and Toph doesn't return his gaze.

"Heck yeah," Toph mutters, grimly, "I want to file some _complaints_."

* * *

**- x - x - x -**

**A/N**: Haha, I'm getting nervous now. I keep fussing until the last minute.

Treading a fine line between the world being better with the changes and the world being screwed up from ninety five years of war and Ozai still being on the throne. But he's better. Not good, per say, but better.

Zuko, meanwhile, is intent on being depressed and will remain insufferable and obtuse for a while. Um, sorry? That's why Sokka's the practical one, especially now that Toph is around to kick them into adventure.

Without people prophesizing Aang must defeat the Fire Lord or asking him to fulfill his Avatar duties or dragging him off in a ship, he wouldn't necessarily be jumping at the chance to leave. Maybe? He ran away from the temple was he didn't like how he was losing his friends and home (which are now Sokka, Katara, and the Water Tribe). Meanwhile Katara's still young and not of the "let's help the Avatar save the world" mentality (especially when their father's still around), and Sokka's still trying to figure out what he's doing / which of his memories and dreams can be trusted. And then Toph comes along. (They were meant to stay in the South Pole longer but no one seemed happy with that.)

In other news: I wish I were competent at the art of warfare.

And thank you for the reviews! Actually, I was surprised that there was already (or would ever be?) some speculation. Ozai killing Zuko? This seems like the perfect opportunity to post something else, for the irony.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** I'll apologize in advance for stringing the plot along (haha, plot), since some things are ending up more secretive than I expected them to be. And still trying to figure out how dark I want this to be. ^^'

- x - x - x -

**_97 ASC (Sokka)_**

**_Autumn_**

- x - x - x -

* * *

Lucid dreams, Sokka discovers, are entirely worse than half-remembered ones, because he sees and hears and _knows_ all of it was true, but can't do a damned thing to change it.

Worse, they give him headaches.

Something about having two trains of thoughts running parallel, _what-I-was-thinking-then_ and _what-I'm-thinking-now_ leaves the world phasing double long after he's woken, a bitter taste at the back of his throat which has Sokka realizing that he _hates_ dramatic irony. It's probably worse than cactus juice.

He blames Toph, and not just because she'd probably be entirely too unsympathetic about his plight if he told her, but because it only really begins once she arrives. His subconscious gleefully latches on to her presence as some sort of catalyst for even more vivid memories, which has got to be the most unorthodox form of bullying he's ever received from her.

It always starts the same, falling into sleep and falling into dreams, like he's diving with the water too cold crashing over him –

– and suddenly he's yanking Zuko to the side, shouting, "_Gawd_, can't you warn a guy before pulling any death-defying stunts? Like, just a five minute notice would be _positively_ charming!" and Zuko is growling back, "I'm not trying to _charm_ you," like that's important part of the throwing-yourself-into-situations-which-are-more-likely-than-not-going-to-get-you_-killed_-is-a-Very-Bad-Idea lecture. Rant. Whatever. The Western Air Temple is getting blown into shrapnel around them and Sokka is thinking _Zuko is an idiot_.

A kind of exasperatingly affection-inducing idiot who's entirely too set on fixing the problems of the world by himself (yeah, like_ that _worked the last three times he tried), but, well… okay, there's really no _but_. That's really just it. Zuko's an idiot and Sokka wishes Zuko would _tell_ him things so he could help keep the other boy safe. Or at the very least join him on his suicidal missions. That's what friends are for, or whatever they are.

(_He's not even sure now what they were, let alone what they are, never liked labels or brands because they were restricting without really saying anything worthwhile - they were important to each other, that was it, wasn't that enough?)_

"Listen, when you joined up with us, there was a contract. Pact. Covenant. What have you." He crashes to the ground to avoid a sudden bolt of lightning, hauling Zuko over with him so the other boy doesn't go skittering over the edge of the cliff like his unfortunate dao swords had. Zuko's still not breathing entirely right and reacting more slowly than usual, and Sokka's not worried, he's just fearing for his life. Both of them.

(_Not that it helped and not that he expected it would, they'll die within the month anyway, he always measures his memories by the distance until they fail._)

"It says," Sokka huffs breathlessly, "that you do not go throwing yourself around as bait at people who are trying to kill you. Especially when those people are your sister, because she's kind of scarily good at what she does."

"I wasn't planning for you to stay behind too!" Zuko barks, tugging him out of the way of an incoming fireball. Azula must have lost them in the smoke, or can't get close enough on the air balloon to spot them, because her most recent assault has been pretty scatter-shot. It almost seems like she's just decided to go ahead and blow up the entire temple and be done with it, even though that doesn't seem entirely her style. Sokka has always pegged her more as the sort of person to want to see them killed in front of her own eyes, to make sure they were really dead, and she'd want to do it herself.

(_At least she only killed one of them at the end, that was a good thing, wasn't it? No, not really, he's not very good at being an optimist._)

Sokka's about to retort: That's your problem, you _don't plan_. That's why I have to stick around you and be your plan guy. – or something mushy to that effect, since Zuko's the type of person who needs to hear those sort of things or else he'll forget, but that's when the roof caves in on them. Sokka makes a mental note to tell Zuko later, filed along with similarly important mental notes to do some more aerial battle drills with Appa and to lightning-proof his clothing. Right now, he's a bit distracted with staying alive.

(_In the end Sokka forgets to tell him._)

* * *

They spend a night at the Southern Water Tribe before boarding onto Toph's ship and setting sail for the Earth Kingdom. Aang protests that they should just ride on Appa, it'll be _quicker_, but Toph pats the furry creature's head and shakes her head.

"Sorry Appa, but I prefer metal."

Besides, it's not speed they want but a destination. And depending on who's steering they might just get lost.

Appa ends up being stuffed into the hull of the ship but he doesn't seem to mind entirely. The endless bales of hay lining the interior might have something to do with that, and Sokka scowls when he realizes Toph must have thought ahead. _He's_ supposed to be the plan guy, even if his plans hadn't really been working out. In his defense, he didn't have sufficient intel to be working with.

Gran-gran doesn't entirely approve of the entire venture but apparently thirteen is a much more acceptable age to save the world (or help a friend) than eleven, so she sends them off with packs full of sleeping bags and medicines and food supplies even though they're boarding a _merchant ship_ and will be traveling with a _merchant's daughter_. Which, you know, kind of makes getting supplies easy.

Katara and Aang are going mostly because Sokka himself is going, but he thinks they also have their own little wishes in mind. Katara wants to go to the North Pole, where she'll be able to talk to someone who actually _does_ know waterbending (and she never says it explicitly but sometimes he catches her gazing at the spot where their father's seacraft disappeared over the horizon). Aang wants to go to the rest of the air temples without having to go alone. And they both love adventure, in their own special ways, and they haven't yet learned to hate the war. Katara still wakes up at night with mother's burnt corpse in her eyes but she hasn't had to replace their mother's face with others'.

Momo chitters and hops onto Aang's shoulder as they board the ship, as if protesting that he won't get left behind. Not another time, at least.

They're all a bit curious about this girl who's come from practically nowhere, but Aang pretty much did the same thing so he's no right to protest. Katara's gotten used to going along with Sokka's, ah, call them instincts, even if this has got to be the most potentially life changing one yet. Bar Aang.

And they're family. This is the sort of things family does for each other. It doesn't have to end the same way as last time.

"It'd be easier," Toph scowls as her crew flurries about them preparing to depart, "if Sparky would _stay in one place_." Her tone implies that there is a prolonged detention in stone shackles awaiting Zuko's future, and her expression is the one that all females in Sokka's life have, which means it'd be best to just shut up and listen. It beats being knocked unconscious. Again.

"And it doesn't help that the world is _still _stupidly ignorant about anything approaching the Fire Nation mainland. Ask about the Fire Nation prince and you'll get blank looks most of the time. The best I can tell, he's wandering the coast with Princess Sparkles."

And that's_ definitely_ not on Sokka's list of top hundred or hundred thousand reunions to have, though it apparently isn't much to worry about currently because Toph has no idea where Azula really is. _The western colonies_ is about all she knows, from the rumors.

"I was hoping you'd be more helpful with actually knowing the guy and all, even it's not official yet this time around. But you're proving just as spectacularly useless as the rest of the world." Toph says it with less heat than general grumpiness towards all of existence.

They end up stopping at a smaller Earth Kingdom settlement to snoop around, mostly out of convenience of the location than anything, and it proves basically just as informative as Toph promised. It actually turns out to be pretty Fire-friendly despite being obviously Earth Kingdom in fashion and customs. Sokka's pretty sure he sees some gold eyes flashing along the street.

Sokka spends half the day haggling in the market place for information as much as the wares the merchants keeping on thrusting into his face, and barely has anything to show for it. Some hmms and haaws, _the Fire Princess burned out the rats in Hu Xin, last I heard, she's sailing across the Mo Ce Sea with the… prince. Ha, really, to give him that title after all these years, you're quite a strange lad. But really, are we going to be standing around here all day talking or will you buy some cabbages?_

All in all, the settlement has the feeling of bustling prosperity despite its small size, with its people so entirely caught up in their own lives that they barely register anything outside the limits of their city. The Fire Nation colonies are a list of names or relations at most, the royal family completely disassociated existences.

It'd be easier if they had a stationary target, and probably safer for everyone involved since when they regroup at the end of the day Toph looks like she's about ready to start throwing boulders at things until Zuko turns up.

He's thankful that at least _one_ useful name and location that's popped up over the day.

"I think," Sokka tells her, "I know just who to go to."

* * *

These are the things Sokka knows about Mai: She is a girl of the Fire Nation born to nobility. He has never seen her smile and if she laughed the world would probably end. She was bored even when the world _did_ end. She is one of the few people with the unfortunate (for her) distinction of being called Azula's friend. She is also one of the few people with the unfortunate (for him) distinction of being able to knock Sokka on his back in five seconds flat. Only she does it with pointy things, rather than freaky magic.

She is an important person to Zuko.

These are the things Sokka knows _from_ Mai: Zuko will love you but he won't let it stop him from doing what he thinks is right, will love you but won't expect you to love him in return, so there is nothing you can do or say to change it. He will love you even if he never, ever expects you to love him back. And he won't.

_Zuko is not an easy boy to love,_ she had said, voice flat and eyes steel. _And I am not the type of girl who can love him._

But she'd died for him anyway.

* * *

This lifetime, Mai's father is the governor of some Fire colony on the northwestern coast of the Earth Kingdom. A little to the south there are other colonies whose citizens are restless even if not outright rebellious, yet the one they are going to is relatively calm.

Calm enough for an Earth Kingdom merchant ship as prestigious as the Beifong's to port in the harbor with no more than a few extra sheathes of paperwork. But what's even stranger is that they manage to get to the harbor from the South Pole without any run-ins with danger whatsoever, save for a loose-flowing iceberg and a slightly suicidal whale. What the heck, Sokka wants to ask the universe. Where was this favoritism last time?

He asks Toph about the lack of fuss and gets a particularly unimpressed response.

"The Beifongs are known to be neutral suppliers in the war," Toph says, with a particularly bland look, as if wondering what sort of rock Sokka's been living under the past few years, so she can bend it into his face. Sokka is very familiar with receiving looks like that.

"Huh, so no one on either side has tried to sink your ship before it gets to the other side?"

Toph smirks. "The Beifongs are known to be_ vicious_ to anyone stopping them from _being_ neutral suppliers in the war. It's enough to curb off most attacks, and when it isn't there's always me." She says it with the boast of pure, unadulterated _fact_.

There are Fire Nation soldiers saluting them as they walk off the boat, and Toph waves off the Earth Kingdom aides following behind her.

"But Mistress-" one protests, and Sokka _still_ hasn't gotten used to the title, or the way the crew members scuttle about him like they're assessing his possibility of being a threat, despite being all of thirteen years old. But then again Toph is all of nine and wielding every iota of influence over her family's workers that he ever expected her to if she were given the chance, and apparently in this lifetime she had been.

Toph waves them all off, declaring, "I don't need any babysitters distracting me when I'm _trying_ to close a trade deal," and they back off easily enough. The fact that she metalbent the gangplank into their faces might have helped. Which leaves Katara and Aang on the ship with a handful of huffy Beifong employees, but they've survived worst situations. Besides, Aang can just fly them over the side of the ship or Katara can do her water-surfy thing if they really want to explore the city. No harm done.

At the governor's mansion Toph presents the guards with some documents verifying herself as a member of the Beifong family and they're let in easily enough. They're told to wait in the lobby while the guard fetches the governor, which is the perfect opportunity for them to sneak down the opposite hall in search of the governor's daughter. Or it should be, if Toph would only start sneaking.

"_Psst_, Toph! Sneakage commencing, right about now," Sokka stage whispers, already halfway down the hall, but she just stares at him blankly like he's grown a second head. Except not, because she wouldn't even notice if he had.

"I _told_ you I'm doing trade negotiations," she huffs. "You can go sneaking by yourself, can't you Snoozles? It's not that scary." Says the nine year old. Says the nine year old who can beat him up in under twenty seconds.

"Er, right. Meet you back here in twenty?"

* * *

He manages to get twenty steps down the second hallway before he's knocked flat on his back with knives pinning his shirt and a dagger to his throat.

"_Ow_. Oh hey Mai, wow, you can still do that pointy knife thing, huh? Actually, you can do it _really_ well."

Mai gives him a flat look, full of all the unimpressed boredom of a noble girl who'd just caught a thief wandering their halls. Wait, no, that's probably a bad analogy.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, dully, as if she doesn't really to care what his answer is and is asking more out of a preconceived social obligation than anything. "And how do you know my name?"

"Haha, that's, um, Zuko told me about you," Sokka says, trying to make it not sound like a question.

Technically, Zuko had, and Sokka has to make this convincing. At the very least, convincing enough, so that Mai thinks that Zuko and he are pals, fallen out-of-touch for the past few months. Then Sokka and Mai can spend time reminiscing (however much Mai reminiscences) about their mutual friend and Sokka can find out where said friend currently is. That's the plan at least, and Sokka likes it because it's quick and straightforward and he knows enough about both of them for it to work.

Except when he gets to the "fallen out-of-touch for the past few months" part Mai presses even closer and her knife draws _blood_ and Sokka is squeaked into silence.

"You're lying," she states, flinty and cool.

Part of him wails _how do you even **know**?_ while the rest of him just smiles nervously and asks, "What do you mean?". He has never heard her voice hold so _little_ emotion as in that one statement, until he hears her next one.

Mai says, "Zuko's dead. He's been dead for three years," and the frost in her voice could crack glaciers.

* * *

- x - x - x -

**_95 ASC (Zuko)_**

**_Spring_**

- x - x - x -

* * *

_There are some things you aren't taught at court, so it is better this way, he thinks, really. No one will suspect a thing._

_Two royals of the Fire Nation dying within a month of one another caused rumors in the previous life. Not as many as it could have since they had been an ocean apart, but he doesn't think people will easily follow that reasoning at three. And he doesn't want rumors. There are more important things to do._

_He is a Fire Nation prince who hasn't been taught this technique, in this lifetime, so they'll never think to look for it, and they won't call foul play. It's a suicide technique for firebenders captured during the war, for patriots who'd rather die than give up secrets of their nation, for cowards who'd rather run than face torture. Prolonged torture, at least, because it hurts all the same._

_Even those sucked of sunlight should be able to generate enough heat to burn out their organs. You don't even need a visible flame. To people who don't know the signs it'll look like a normal fever, so by the time they try to stop you it'll already be too late._

_His father was the one who told him, just after he was banished, and it was the last thing his father taught him so he treasured it away. **In case you get caught**_,_ his father told him, but more important than that, _**don't _get caught_**_, because he was still a Fire Prince and Fire heir despite it all, and he convinced himself it meant his father loved him._

_He'd picked the date and everything, close enough to his cousin's death that it'd still be fresh in their minds and his father wouldn't have time to plot. Long enough to account for second thoughts._

_He ends up sitting in bed for half of the night before, staring at the knife his Uncle had sent him. **Never Give Up**, it reads, and he isn't, he thinks desperately, he isn't giving up. _

_He is simply redefining his objective._

_Eventually the moon starts sinking and the sky starts lightening. He sheathes his knife with the tinniest, finalizing click._

_The flame he builds is small at first, deep in the pit of his stomach. He holds it still and steady, __thinks of tides and diving__. He breathes in, deep, and then he lets it go._

_(His father had been right, after all. It hurt.)_

* * *

_He died. He died, and his mother, in her grief, didn't leave the palace for days. Ozai asked for the throne because he still had one living heir while Iroh had none, and Lord Azulon couldn't ask for the death of his first-born, his first-born was already gone._

_It's just the grief speaking, his mother told the Fire Lord, I'm sure you understand. My honored brother would, she said, and they waited for his uncle to return._

_The letter came before his uncle did, withdrawing from his place in the succession of the throne. If Fire Lord Azulon had any contention with this it was never heard. He died in his sleep, and as to the fact that he hadn't seemed ill before, well, the same sudden sort of sickness had claimed Prince Zuko after all._

_There was a brief panic about an epidemic but that soon died out, overtaken by the bustle of the crowning ceremony after Fire Lord Azulon's will was read._

_The will confirmed Ozai as successor for the throne, left at the side of Fire Lord Azulon's bed along with a personal letter for his heir. Both were penned by a scribe, but bore his seal and signature, and few doubted they were his words. Not enough to protest, at least._

_You will be a great Fire Lord, the letter said. You will be a better man than me. _

_This life (this death), it's only the first lie he's told._

* * *

**- x - x - x -**


	4. Chapter 4

_- x - x - x -_

_**97 ASC (Sokka)**_

_**Autumn**_

_- x - x - x -_

* * *

"You're lying," Sokka tells Mai, echoing her statement, voice hollowed with disbelief.

"I'm not," Mai says, voice unbearably flat. "There was a funeral. I saw him burned. I saw him scattered to the winds." Her knife presses even deeper into his flesh.

"I'm not lying, but you are. Tell me why you're lying."

He can't breathe. He can't breathe and it has nothing to do with the knife at his throat, the girl in his breathing space. It has everything to do with the words ringing in his head.

_Zuko's dead, dead, dead, he's been dead for three years._Three years was how long Sokka had remembered him.

"You're lying," Sokka repeats, because this was supposed to be a second chance. "Zuko can't be dead."

There must be something convincing in his voice, or something disturbing, because Mai pulls away just enough for him to break free and start sprinting down the hall. He runs past the entranceway where Toph is still waiting, but doesn't stop even when she starts yelling after him. He doesn't stop until he's run through the market, until he's run through the city, until he's run to the ocean and can't run any further.

He stands on the shore with the waves lapping his feet, and he still doesn't feel like it's enough.

* * *

Toph finds Sokka long after he's run. The cut on his throat has begun scabbing over by now.

"Want to talk about it?" she asks, burying her feet into the sand. It's kind of her, Sokka thinks. She's giving him the opportunity to lie.

But Toph is the only one he can talk to about the truth and expect to be understood, and Sokka doesn't want to ruin that now.

"Mai told me that Zuko's dead," he tells her, voice barely catching over the wind. Like if he says it softly enough, it won't have enough substance to be true.

It's a stupid idea.

"Oh," Toph says, very, very quietly. But not very surprised at all.

"Did you _know_?" he asks, and his voice cracks at the end. Puberty, he'd reason. But it's not, it's not. "Did you drag me all the way to the Earth Kingdom just to let somebody _else_tell me?"

Toph scowls fiercely then but he isn't thinking about right hooks or concussions, he isn't thinking much at all.

"I didn't drag you _anywhere_," she growls, fists in his shirt and face in his own. "And I didn't _know_. It's just, after you go so long without people talking you start to _suspect_."

She lets his shirt go, but only after she's kicked his feet out from underneath him so he's tasting a mouthful of sand. "I was kind of hoping I was wrong."

He turns to the side and spits out the sand, but even then he can't find any words to say.

* * *

Katara is in a Fire Nation colony and she is smiling more widely than Sokka remembers her having done for a while, in both lifetimes, and it isn't fair.

_You weren't this happy before_, Sokka wants to say, bitterly, except that isn't what he wants to say at all. Her smile and his laughter, they used to mean hope. That this time around, things would be better.

Sokka wonders if the world is really better. He almost doesn't want it to be.

Toph sits with him on the deck that night with her knees tucked to her chest and eyes on the floor, and it's only when she sniffles very quietly that he realizes she is crying. He hugs her to his chest and she lets him.

They were friends, he remembers, Toph and Zuko.

Zuko and himself. They were more.

Sokka never told Zuko how much he cared. He'd never known how much he really did. He still doesn't, not in quantity or depth, doesn't know how to measure it in anything other than the feeling that he'll never see Zuko again.

He spends the night thinking about that. He spends the next few days.

He thinks he should cry, but mostly he feels a biting sort of bleakness and the passage of days.

* * *

Sokka thinks. He's good at that.

He thinks he should have paid more attention. He thinks he should have kept the men from leaving the village. He thinks he should have told someone the Avatar had returned. He thinks they should never tell anyone.

He thinks he should have looked for Zuko sooner.

The worst thought is that these things might not have made any difference at all.

* * *

Toph has one of her aids to buy him a messenger hawk at the market, a sleek beautiful bird whose plumage gleams in the sun. Returning the favor, she says, and he thinks Hawky, how this bird is not Hawky at all. He doesn't touch the bird for days, just glares at its black dewy eyes until he realizes he's being petty and hurting the bird's feelings for no reasons.

And it's a nice bird, probably. It hasn't even tried to peck him.

He writes a letter. Multiple, really, though the first one he sends is to his dad. In the letter he asks his dad how he's doing. How the war is going. If Bato is alright. Things are different this time around. Last time he wouldn't have even had a messenger hawk to send a letter. But maybe some things are the same.

He's kind of sketchy on how the hawk is even going to find the men, but Fire Nation hawks are nothing short of miracle workers when it comes to delivering messages. More than that, he's not entirely sure what the men's policy on the Fire Nation's messenger system will be, and his father loves meat just as much as him. Maybe more. That at least has definitely not changed.

"Don't let them eat you," Sokka warns the hawk as he sets it off, scroll tied to its back.

He loves the hawk, Sokka decides, spontaneously. He's going to treasure it once it gets back.

* * *

The thing about letters is you have to wait for them to be delivered before you can expect a response, and he can't get a response until the hawk comes back. Not Hawky. Hawky Mach II.

So he's going to wait until Hawky Mach II somehow finds his father's ship. He's going to wait until the tribesmen figure out the hawk actually does want to land, rather than fly off in the other direction hoarding Fire Nation secret. He's going to wait until the tribesmen figure out how to get the damned bird (their words, he's imagining) to land. He's going to wait for Dad to write him something back. He's going to wait for the hawk to return.

And then, only then, is he going to mail the other letters he's written. These are not letters to his dad.

After that, he promises himself, he isn't going to wait anymore.

To ensure he doesn't write through Toph's entire supply of parchment and ink (not that the girl would notice or care, but her aide would certainly throw a fit), he goes out walking in the market.

Mai catches him the first day and holds a knife to his throat. It's becoming a common occurrence with them but he hopes she'll get bored of it soon. Sokka grins and asks if she wants to share stories, but the lump in his throat is hard to laugh around and his voice comes out a bit crackly.

It was nice of her, he thinks, to have pulled him into an ally. This could have been very awkward out in public.

"I'm half-convinced you're insane," Mai states, but doesn't pull away.

A strong girl. (She was important to Zuko.)

"Sure," Sokka agrees amiably, "let's go with that."

Mai frowns at him, staring at him with dark eyes, and Sokka thinks of eyes like that, except that those eyes smoldered. Zuko used to look at him like that, like he was trying to puzzle out the meaning of the universe, before going off and doing something monumentally idiotic anyway.

Mai lets him go.

"Don't ever come near my house again," she says in a flat voice, which for anyone else would be a snarl.

She steps out of the ally, easily becoming another of the crowd. That's a no on the sharing stories, Sokka suspects.

* * *

He doesn't see Mai in the market place after that. Instead all he finds is the Fire Nation colonists love to gossip. About Hu Xin provinces to the south and how absolutely unruly they can be at times, couldn't those mayors learn anything from Morishita? Absolutely incorrigible, that lot, maybe even delusional, there are a few reports insisting they've seen the Blue Spirit wondering their towns. Maybe it's due to terror, having brought down Princess Azula's wrath, and the Dragon of the West stalking right behind her.

It's enough to give Sokka pause, but not enough to make him stop. His messenger hawk is named Hawky Mach II, Sokka thinks firmly, and Mai had no reason to lie.

Toph spends the next week closing the trade deal and training Aang into the ground. Out of sight of the colony, so no one asks too many questions, but that doesn't make her any less vicious about it. Aang just has to find his own way to crawl back to the boat. Or he could bend himself back on a sort of earth sled, but he hasn't quite seemed to grasp the technique.

Katara ends up patching him up with her makeshift healing, which actually seems to be improving now that she has a live subject to practice on.

The spats between Toph and Katara seem especially hissy this time around. A silent sort of hissy, as if the years had actually helped them mature to a point of attempting to talk (that is, yell and fight) their problems out. Now they mostly glare at each other in silence (or, well, Katara glares at Toph while Toph squints in Katara's general direction), each insisting they won't be the first to break the silence.

At least there are no screaming matches, but Aang gets entirely too skittish in their collective presences and ends up seeking Sokka's company after practice.

"I don't get it. It's like, they think they can make the other one cave just by not talking. How can you reach a compromise if _no one's talking?_"

Aang's assuming they want to reach a compromise in the first place, which is kind of ridiculously idealistic, but not a part of Aang's personality that Sokka's going to try and change.

"Girls," Sokka shrugs, and Aang winces while poking one of his not-quite-healed bruises. "Yeah, girls."

* * *

The night that Aang doesn't come to sit with him finds Katara plopping down in his place instead.

"Tell me what's wrong," she says, cutting straight to the point, and Sokka frowns.

"Aren't you supposed to ask more delicately than that? Like, test the grounds, make sure I'm not too emotionally compromised or something?"

"I would if that'd work," Katara snorts, "but I know you better than that." Yet despite what she says, her next words are soft. "Did you remember something else?" she asks, and she doesn't know all the things he's never told her, all the things he'll never tell her. But there are some things he wants her to know.

"I remembered someone else," he says. "But it was a long time ago, and I never told you, because I wanted you to meet him yourself. His name was Zuko and he was important to me and even if you'll never meet him, I want you to know that much."

Her mouth catches in a puzzled frown and she looks at him like she doesn't quite understand, but he hadn't really expected her to.

"We're going to meet up with Dad soon," Sokka tells her instead. "We're going to tell him the truth about Aang."

* * *

_- x - x - x -_

**_97 ASC (Zuko)_**

**_Autumn_**

_- x - x - x -_

* * *

Azula wears armor and shines like the Fire Nation in this mockery that is the colonist governor's home. It's all dark wood and heavy furniture, thick red silk strung through tapestries and gold flaking onto the floor.

_It's gaudy,_Azula mouths to him, when the governor isn't looking, and he has to agree. It's overstated, overbearing, everything three sizes too grand, embellished under the governor's orders just as the governess pleased. The mantle is full of dolls, dew eyes and down hair, which must belong to their daughter, a girl who's almost Azula's age. They're the latest trend in the Fire Nation, or at least they were a year ago. Azula had shown him her own collection, before she'd set them all on fire.

It hadn't taken Uncle long to reconsider his choice of gifts for Azula once she started returning them to him as ashes. _I'm sorry, but I don't quite think they're my style_. Maybe, if he'd known, Uncle would have sent her the pearl-bladed knife instead.

It's Azula Uncle give his lessons to now, his koans and his knowledge on how to best kill a man. _You take to lightning just like your father_, Uncles had said, ruefully, the first time Azula had tried to generate it and almost burnt the watchtower down, and she had smirked to hide her smile. Her technique isn't perfect though, still prone to unwanted discharge, so she refuses to use it in combat.

But this is not a time for fighting, and the smile Azula gives the governor is a lesson Ursa taught her instead.

* * *

The governor is nervous, the way only guilty men are nervous, but Azula simply tilts her lips, perfect white teeth aligned in a row. She asks if the man would reconsider.

His treason, of course, what else would she be talking about? It's the most interesting thing happening in the area. The Earth Kingdom certainly seems interested, with so many soldiers stationed near the city doors. They'd be ready to move, as soon as he tells them where to attack.

And he would, wouldn't he? He'd tell them everything he knew about the Fire Nation and its weaknesses, about the hardest way for the Earth Kingdom to lose. Because it will. The Earth Kingdom will fight and the Earth Kingdom will burn, and it'll just be a matter of who will burn with it.

_We're simply trying to reduce the casualties_, Azula reasons. _It's unfortunate your wife had to be one of them._

The man asks what she means but his eyes say he already knows. How else would they have known? The contact and the date and all the specifics only someone close to him would know. But he doesn't want to believe it, not from a girl a quarter of his age, with an expression so soft it's like poison.

_So I'll ask you again. Won't you reconsider?_

When the man takes too long to answer, Azula smiles, smiles, smiles, asks if she should ask his daughter instead.

* * *

The thing about humans is they're all distinctly different while being fundamentally the same, so he has heard this conversation in its half dozen variation a dozen or so times. He could almost give it himself, if he had anyone to tell.

This man, at least, is one of the more bearable ones. He cares.

"What would you have me do," he asks, bitter and bare, "with the Earth Kingdom at our door and the Fire Nation at our back? Your treaties let them keep their lands so close to our borders, your war keep their teeth bared at our throats. They'd attack us first, to get to you. I had to bargain for our safety."

Azula laughs and it's an unpleasant thing, mockery deep within its trenches. "You say it like we would have given them a chance to attack. You say it like your very actions wouldn't have ensured your city's involvement." She pauses, bares her teeth. "You say it like it isn't your fault."

She always laughs at them like this, silly men with their silly hearts which she never quite understands. She bends them and breaks them and Uncle comes back to pick up all the pieces.

His timing is impeccable, as always, and Uncle walks through the door with a lady on his arm just as the governor rises to stand. "The tea was lovely, really, we must do it again," the lady smiles. The governor looks like he's seen a ghost, except the man wouldn't have ignored him if he had.

"Your wife is delightful company to keep," Uncle declares, beaming wide and unassuming. He clasps his hand over the governor's shoulder, as much to steady as to restrain. "I can only hope my niece was the same."

Azula inclines her head and steps to Uncle's side, while the governess laughs like he's made a joke. "She's sweeter than my daughter could ever be," she says, and excuses herself to see her daughter is actually asleep. _She'd sneak down here to stay up all night, playing with her dolls,_and the governor numbly agrees. He waits until her footsteps have faded down the hall, before turning to them once again.

"What would you have me do?" the governor repeats, but this time it is resigned. He asks Azula, yet Uncle answers him instead. Azula barely glances at the man, eyes upon Uncle rather than a discarded toy. At least this one she only threatened to burn.

"I would have you return to the Fire Nation," Uncle answers, "where your family will be safe and our troops free from harm." But that is only what he says on the surface. He means it, of course, but really he means something more. A reminder, _There is nothing that the Earth Kingdom could do that the Fire Nation could not return a hundred times worse. But we won't, not to our own countrymen_. Not to the governor and his family, if they choose to stay that way.

_Do not forget it,_commands Uncle's gaze, and the man bows low, his forehead to the Flame.

* * *

He leaves before Uncle can try to talk to him that night, because although Uncle has given no indication to wanting to try, the general is always at his most dangerous when he's unassuming. Uncle has been trying for years to get him to stand still, to go moon-gazing like there's nothing more important to do, to make him admit what is wrong. Uncle has been trying for lifetimes.

"I do not know what has happened in the Fire Nation in my absence," Uncle had said, mere weeks after Ba Sing Se. "I do not know how much of the Fire Nation I only now see as the truth." And he had thought that Ba Sing Se had broken Uncle, in ways he had not let time fix.

Uncle thinks that the Fire Palace has broken him.

"The nephew I remember was not so cold," he'd said, and the uncle he remembers was not so cruel.

He does not think that Uncle sees him as much of a nephew at all. To Uncle he is a memory without resolution, a spirit without peace, a problem to be fixed by his lessons. It's part of why they're here, he thinks, so very long from home. Uncle will bury him in the Earth Kingdom, far from the supposed hurts of his past and so close to Uncle's own.

It'll be just like last time, in all the wrong ways.

The easiest way to interact with Uncle is to not interact with him at all, because every moment he spends in the man's presence is a moment that could have been more. But that wasn't part of the bargain, and he isn't allowed to tell. He wouldn't even if he could, hopes he wouldn't be so desperate as to beg off his uncle's affections, borrowed even in another lifetime and stolen in this.

It's easier when Uncle is with Azula, because Uncle never had a daughter to compare her to.

* * *

It's not like Uncle can protest when he leaves, because they'll have to confirm the governor won't be making any final attempts at treason. _One of the most dangerous pitfalls of plans_, Azula had huffed,_;is counting on your opponent to be __**intelligent**__._

He's not sure if this is what they intended, but the spirits gave him a mask that looks like the Blue Spirit's so he wears it with a ribbon of white silk tied about his head. White silk is for death, is for mourning, and he feels a bit conceited grieving his own death, but Azula insists on the reminder. It shimmers in the dark and is horrible for stealth, but it's not like he has to worry about that anymore. A spirit makes a better spy than a rumor, a ghost a better spy than a spirit, and no one will ever discover how Azula learns of the rebels' plans, or at least they won't from him.

He skulks about the city because he learns the strangest things in the strangest of places, and he never knows what Azula might find important. It's how he wanders into a fortune teller's shop, or at least he thinks it's one. The walls are shelved with powders and poultices, tea leaves and incense, and there's a low table at the center of the room, cushions laid out like an invitation.

He isn't expecting the voice so he almost stumbles out the window as he turns to leave. Mostly, he isn't expecting the voice to be talking to him.

"I would say that your future is full of struggle and anguish," comes a raspy voice, "most of it self-inflicted. But it'd probably be better to call that your present."

There is the sound of clinking as an old woman steps out from a curtain of beads. She stares past him like she doesn't see him, walks in front of him like she doesn't hear him, but her words seem too targeted for her to be talking to an empty room.

"You are chasing something," she says, staring through the window to the moon. "You have always been chasing something. You will always be chasing something, without ever reaching an end."

If this is a prophecy he doesn't want to hear it. If this is a warning he doesn't need to heed it. But he can't seem to make himself leave.

_Is there somewhere you want to be?_ ask her eyes, _Is there someone you want to see?_

Yes. Yes. He'd be a liar to say otherwise. But the answers are not the same as they used to be.

"I sense you're still here. Perhaps words have an effect on you after all," she smirks. "Tell your uncle he owes me dinner and tea."

* * *

**- x - x - x -**

**A/N**:  
Sorry for the delay in updating, and for the chapter being mostly transitional. This chapter went through a lot of rewrites (both intentional and unintentional), and may be subjected to future ones, but I wanted to progress in the plot. I think this is going to end up a bit more action/adventure than I originally thought (so...genre change!).

Verse-trivia to share this time (and hopefully answering some questions ^^'):

[1] Aang and Katara: I'll be honest, I kind of forget to write them at times. But they'll remain important to the story. As for memories, "not being able to remember the past life" is the default setting. Zuko's memories were intentional, while Sokka and Toph's were flukes. I was trying to write out the bargain in its entirety, but it didn't really seem to fit in the story quite yet.

[2] Hawky Mach II: *cough* I don't think I have Sokka's flair for naming. Anyway, this bird can send letters _anywhere_. It'd probably be best not to question it too much. ^^'

[3] The fortune teller: Yep, that was supposed to be Aunt Wu, doing Iroh a favor (well, being a bit liberal about her execution of the favor, but still). Because all old people know each other. And I'm not very good with original characters. (And that was Sokka's "fortune". ...they share a future together? So cheesy. ^^')

[4] Ozai and Ursa: What are they doing in the meanwhile? Domestic policy. And/or whatever Ozai was doing season 1/2, just less evil. Ostensibly.

[5] Azula and Iroh, intimidation team extraordinaires: Looking at the 36 Stratagems (ridiculous amounts of notes can be found on my LJ).

Azula's favored stratagems: (1) Watch the fire from the opposite bank of the river, (2) Hide a sword in a smile, (3) To capture the brigands (rebels), capture their king

Iroh's favored stratagems: (1) Cross the pass in the dark, (2) Point at one to scold another, (3) Feign ignorance without going crazy

Oh, and a reviewer shared a lovely song, so I'd like to share some as well. ^_^ Ludovico Einaudi was the inspiration of this story's tone, with _The Crane Dance_ being the source and _Samba_ being specific to this chapter (or at least half of it).

**- x - x - x -**

_Next time: Contact. So, you want to be a Freedom Fighter?_


End file.
